1. Technical Field
This disclosure concerns a system and method for improving call center support services by providing a dynamic call flow tool to call center agents. In particular, this disclosure relates to an efficient and cost effective way to improve call handling, learning adoption rates, and training timelines for call center agents.
2. Background Information
The growth and globalization of the call center support industry has resulted from the globalization of markets that rely on call center support services. In many cases, the global markets rely on 24×7 call center support in order to handle the enormous volume of customer calls, each of which must be handled in an efficient, correct, and helpful manner. Call center support organizations deliver support services under the constant pressure of lowering operating margins in order to remain competitive and locate call center facilities in economically viable and geographically diverse regions of the world. Vendors in the global market place constantly introduce new technologies and products, which force call center organizations to constantly distribute information on new technologies and products, including new call flows and revised call flows for handling customer inquiries. Accordingly, call centers maintain agent training programs in order to attempt to address new and continually changing call flows, slow learning adoption rates, and long training timelines for call agents.
Call centers measure the performance of call center facilities and individual agents based on many factors, including average handle time (AHT) and first call resolution (FCR). Call centers measure and define AHT as the sum of the average talk time between a consumer and agent and the average after-call work required to resolve the issue that the consumer called for support. Call centers measure first call resolution as an indication of whether an issue is resolved for a caller upon the first call, avoiding a need for a subsequent call. Improved AHT and FCR are goals for most call centers. Yet, significant technical challenges exist to improving AHT, FCR and their related performance parameters.
Many call centers use paper based call flows in an attempt to improve AHT and FCR. However, call center managers must physically distribute to agents located across various geographical locations paper based call flows that are not easy to read, require agents to manually flip through multiple call flows, and determine to which of multiple pages in a complex call flow to turn at any given point. The result is slow learning adoption rates, long training timelines for call agents, and reduced ability to successfully resolve the call.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method that address the problems noted above and other problems previously encountered.